Oxford Street, dates from 1734, but here was situated a leper’s hospital founded by Matilda, wife of Henry I., in 1101. Its chapel became the parish church on the suppression of the monasteries. The church of St Andrew, the parish of which extends into the City, stands near Holborn Viaduct. It is by Wren, but there are traces of the previous Gothic edifice in the tower. Sacheverell was among its rectors (1713–1724), and Thomas Chatterton (1770) was interred in the adjacent burial ground, no longer extant, of Shoe Lane Workhouse; the register recording his Christian name as William. Close to this church is the City Temple (Congregational).
Two of the four Inns of Court, Lincoln’s Inn and Gray’s Inn, lie within the borough. Of the first the Tudor gateway opens upon Chancery Lane. The chapel, hall and residential buildings surrounding the squares within, are picturesque, but of later date. To the west lie the fine square, with public gardens, still called, from its original character, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Gray’s Inn, between High Holborn and Theobald’s Road, and west of Gray’s Inn Road, is of similar arrangement. The fabric of the small chapel is apparently of the 14th century, and may have been attached to the manor house of Portpool, held at that period by the Lords Grey of Wilton. Of the former Inns of Chancery attached to these Inns of Court the most noteworthy buildings remaining are those of Staple Inn, of which the timbered and gabled Elizabethan front upon High Holborn is a unique survival of its character in a London thoroughfare; and of Barnard’s Inn, occupied by the Mercer’s School. Both these were attached to Gray’s Inn. Of Furnival’s and Thavies Inns, attached to Lincoln’s Inn, only the names remain. The site of the first is covered by the fine red brick buildings of the Prudential Assurance Company, Holborn Viaduct. Among other institutions in Holborn, the British Museum, north of New Oxford Street, is pre-eminent. The varied collections of Sir John Soane, accumulated at his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, are open to view as the Soane Museum. There may also be mentioned the Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with museum; the Royal Colleges of Organists, and of Veterinary Surgeons, the College of Preceptors, the Jews’ College, and the Metropolitan School of Shorthand. Among hospitals are the Italian, the Homœopathic, the National for the paralysed and epileptic, the Alexandra for children with hip disease, and the Hospital for sick children. The Foundling Hospital, Guilford Street, was founded by Thomas Coram in 1739.
HOLCROFT, THOMAS (1745–1809), English dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born on the 10th of December 1745 (old style) in Orange Court, Leicester Fields, London. His father, besides having a shoemaker’s shop, kept riding horses for hire; but having fallen into difficulties was reduced ultimately to the necessity of hawking pedlary. The son accompanied his parents in their tramps, and succeeded in procuring the situation of stable boy at Newmarket, where he spent his evenings chiefly in miscellaneous reading and the study of music. Gradually he obtained a knowledge of French, German and Italian. At the end of his term of engagement as stable boy he returned to assist his father, who had again resumed his trade of shoemaker in London; but after marrying in 1765, he became a teacher in a small school in Liverpool. He failed in an attempt to set up a private school, and became prompter in a Dublin theatre. He acted in various strolling companies until 1778, when he produced The Crisis; or, Love and Famine, at Drury Lane. Duplicity followed in 1781. Two years later he went to Paris as correspondent of the Morning Herald. Here he attended the performances of Beaumarchais’s Mariage de Figaro until he had memorized the whole. The translation of it, with the title The Follies of the Day, was produced at Drury Lane in 1784. The Road to Ruin, his most successful melodrama, was produced in 1792. A revival in 1873 ran for 118 nights. Holcroft died on the 23rd of March 1809. He was a member of the Society for Constitutional Information, and on that account was, in 1794, indicted of high treason, but was discharged without a trial. Among his novels may be mentioned Alwyn (1780), an account, largely autobiographical, of a strolling comedian, and Hugh Trevor (1794–1797). He also was the author of Travels from Hamburg through Westphalia, Holland and the Netherlands to Paris, of some volumes of verse and of translations from the French and German.
His Memoirs written by Himself and continued down to the Time of his Death, from his Diary, Notes and other Papers, by William Hazlitt, appeared in 1816, and was reprinted, in a slightly abridged form, in 1852.
HOLDEN, HUBERT ASHTON (1822–1896), English classical
scholar, came of an old Staffordshire family. He was educated
at King Edward’s school, Birmingham, and Trinity College,
Cambridge (senior classic, 1845; fellow, 1847). He was vice-principal
of Cheltenham College (1853–1858), and headmaster
of Queen Elizabeth’s school, Ipswich (1858–1883). He died
in London on the 1st of December 1896. In addition to several
school editions of portions of Cicero, Thucydides, Xenophon
and Plutarch, he published an expurgated text of Aristophanes
with a useful onomasticon (re-issued separately, 1902) and larger
editions of Cicero’s De officiis (revised ed., 1898) and of the
Octavius of Minucius Felix (1853). His chief works, however,
were his Foliorum silvula (1852), a collection of English extracts
for translation into Greek and Latin verse; Folia silvulae
(translations of the same); and Foliorum centuriae, a companion
volume of extracts for Latin prose translation. In English
schools these books have been widely used for the teaching of
Latin and Greek composition.
HOLDEN, SIR ISAAC, Bart. (1807–1897), English inventor
and manufacturer, was the son of Isaac Holden, a native of
Cumberland, and was born at Hurlet, a village between Paisley
and Glasgow, on the 7th of May 1807. His early life was passed
in very straitened circumstances, but his father spared no pains
to give him as much elementary education as possible. At the
age of ten he began to work as weaver’s draw-boy, and afterwards
was employed in a cotton mill. Meanwhile his education
was continued at the night schools, and from time to time,
as funds allowed, he was taken from work and sent to the
grammar-school, to which he at last went regularly for a year
or two until he was fifteen, when his father removed to Paisley
and apprenticed him to an uncle, a shawl-weaver there. This
proving too much for his strength, in 1823 he became assistant
teacher in a school at Paisley, and in 1828 he was appointed
mathematical teacher in the Queen’s Square Academy, Leeds.
At the end of six months he was transferred to Lingard’s grammar
school, near Huddersfield, and shortly afterwards became
classical master at Castle Street Academy, Reading. It was here
that in 1829 he invented a lucifer match by adopting sulphur
as the medium between the explosive material and the wood,
but he refused to patent the invention. In 1830 his health
again failed, and he returned to Scotland, where a Glasgow
friend set up a school for him. After six months, however,
he was recommended for the post of bookkeeper to Messrs.
Townend Brothers, worsted manufacturers, of Cullingworth,
where his interest in machinery soon led to his transfer from
the counting-house to the mill. There his experiments led him
to the invention of his square motion wool-comber and of a
process for making genappe yarns, a patent for which was taken
out by him in conjunction with S. C. Lister (Lord Masham)
in 1847. The firm of Lister & Holden, which established a
factory near Paris in 1848, carried on a successful business, and
in 1859, when Lister retired, was succeeded by Isaac Holden
and Sons, which became the largest wool-combing business in
the world, employing upwards of 4000 workpeople. In 1865
Holden’s medical advisers insisted on complete change of
occupation, and he entered parliament as Liberal member for
Knaresborough. From 1868 to 1882 he was without a seat,
but in the latter year he was elected for the northern division
of the West Riding, and in 1885 for Keighley. He was created
a baronet in 1893, and died suddenly at Oakworth House,
near Keighley, on the 13th of August 1897.
His son and heir, Sir Angus Holden, was in 1908 created a peer with the title of Baron Holden of Alston.
